Article Review Assignment

Carrie Yodanis 's central question is : How is a divorce culture measured as both national practices and attitudes toward divorce related to gender equality in marriage on an individual level (646-7 (Question 1 ) One theory is called the Bargaining theory . It is partners have options both within and outside marriage , and each partner 's ability to negotiate in the bargaining process is based on the options that are available to him or her ' In other words , if a person feels that they can leave their spouse and still be able to support themselves

, and still be able to live a secure and sufficient lifestyle they are more willing to use divorce as a threat to get the terms that they want within the marriage . Yodanis calls it the `divorce threat point . Yodanis says , when it became easier to leave a relationship gender dynamics within the relationship improved ' The hypothesis that is related to this theory is that divorce culture may decrease the inequality between marriage partners . The counter hypothesis that is presented is that divorce culture may actually increase the inequality (645

The research that was conducted was an attempt to find out if marriages are more equal in countries characterized by strong divorce cultures , or if marriages are less equal in countries characterized by strong divorce cultures

Marriage culture is defined as the belief , assumption , and practice that marriage is a given and forever (645

Divorce culture is defined as a set of beliefs and practices that define marriage as optional and conditional , with divorce being an option if the marriage does not work (645 (Question 2 ) Yodanis used a 15 minute questionnaire taken by samplings of couples from 22 different countries . There are two sets of data country level and individual level . For the individual sample , only married women are counted . Cohabiting participants were not counted This was done because the key variables were about women and their education , employment and their gender ideology . On the country-level all participants were included , because it was necessary to determine the overall views to accurately count the statistics . The main theory of focus required knowledge of the overall culture , be it a marriage or divorce culture , in the country (647-8

This is macro research . They studied several different samplings from many different countries . Although the had individuals take the surveys , it was still very broad research , do to the fact that they are only small representative samples from each different country , as opposed to more focused research of a larger individual sampling from only one country (Question 3 ) The research was intended to discover the level of marital gender equality , as it is relative to several variables . The factor to be rated is the division of household labor

Individual-level independent variables included relative income , gender ideology , age , education , divorce attitudes (648-650 . Country-level independent variables also included age , education , relative income , and individual divorce attitudes along with cohabitation , and the presence of children (650-651 (Question 4